Victoria Brownworth » Uncategorized

Post-racial America Converges on the Capital

victoria — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 23:12:35 +0000

On the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous 1963 march against poverty in Washington, which was also deemed the nation’s first official civil rights march, Glenn Beck rallied about 90,000 people in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Across town Rev. Al Sharpton gathered fewer than 1,000 in a counter-rally.

Beck’s rally was ostensibly to support the troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq (oh wait–we aren’t fighting in Iraq since last week. We’re just dying.) as well as to “restore honor” to America. Sarah Palin was a featured speaker as was Martin Luther King’s niece, Alvida King. And a plethora of black conservatives and black clergy. If the news media’s panning of the crowd was accurate–and it seemed to be–there appeared to be more African Americans than whites on the podium and fewer African Americans in the crowd than on the podium.

Odd.

Meanwhile, over at the Sharpton rally, there were almost no whites, but there was another King relative.

Who says America is post-racial?

Someone said earlier this week that libertarianism is just racism with more syllables. I don’t know if that’s true or just sounds clever, but it does seem that the same people objecting to President Obama weren’t bothered by these same things when President Bush was doing them.

Of course the reverse is also true: so-called liberal/progressives who were outraged by George Bush’s mangling of the Constitution seem totally unfazed by Obama’s continuation of and additions to that trend.

Odd.

I’m not sure what the crowd at the Beck rally means when they say they “want their country back.” I also don’t know what Sharpton means when he says Beck is stealing the Lincoln Memorial and Dr. King’s memory.

Here’s what I do know: When Dr. King organized the poverty march in 1963, it was to fight oppression. I don’t see either Beck or Sharpton as oppressed, nor do I see them addressing the issues that really are affecting America today which are massive unemployment and under-employment, lack of health care, no jobs on the horizon and foreclosures upon foreclosures.

Bill Clinton said it nearly 20 years ago: It’s the economy, stupid.

If America needs reclaiming, it’’s from the poseurs. If America needs reclaiming, it’s from those who don’t know what it needs. If America needs reclaiming, it’s from those who would hijack democracy one rally at a time.

Everyone on the Washington mall today was trying to claim a portion of Dr. King’s legacy. Unfortunately, no one achieved that. And as a consequence, the message of 47 years ago did not resonate.

So much for post-racial America…. —VAB

Park51 v. Whatever

victoria — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 03:13:32 +0000

Sixty percent of Americans are against the war in Afghanistan. Only 250 people turned out today in support of the Park51 project–better known as the Ground Zero Mosque.

Almost all of those who turned out in support were Muslims, if the TV news video is to be believed and the comments on the news are. Maybe ten other people were there, but it was pretty uniformly a group of Muslims. So apparently the support is just in the blogosphere, but not on the streets.

Five times as many people–including a surprising number of self-described New York Jews–turned out. So that’s a total of 1,500 people for an issue that is allegedly so fraught it was the topic on all the Sunday morning talk shows.

Even though it was raining, it wasn’t raining hard and it really doesn’t seem like much of a turnout for all that we’ve been hearing about it. But by all means, let’s keep pumping the story and give it some international weight as well, as Frank Rich did in his NYT column this morning. (New Yorkers really should get out more.)

Rich argued that all the disruption over the ”mosque” was helping to lose the war in Afghanistan.

Oh, please. The Karzai government doesn’t care about the mosque controversy. They’re too busy funnelling U.S. dollars into their own corrupt mismanagement of the country to care what anyone in the U.S. says about a proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero. According to stats released last Friday, almost all Afghans have had to pay at least a third of their income to various bureaucrats as bribes. And the average Afghan income is under $500 per year. It’s one of the poorest nations on earth.

Yes, the mosque controversy is definitely what they are thinking about….

Is the mosque controversy about a war on Islam? Who knows? It feels like a wide mix of people think it’s in poor taste and an affront to the 9/11 dead from Harry Reid to New Yorkers who lost relatives in the attacks.

Some people on the left want to make this about the right and Islamophobia. It may be about that, but it seems more that it’s a deflection–people can’t deal with the war(s), people can’t deal with the economy, both these things are interconnected when it comes to the Park 51 controversy.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I am certanly angry. Am I angry about the proposed Islamic center? No. I’m angry about the Obama Administration’s inability to take a stand on any issue and stick with it for more than a nanosecond. I’m angry about the economy and how my already marginal income has dropped by half since the recession hit while my health care premium is now almost twice my monthly mortgage payment. I’m angry about the lack of action on immigration (to make things easier, not harder, for immigrants). And I am incredibly angry about the fact that the President and his Administration doesn’t seem to feel that there’s a reason to follow through on a single queer civil rights initiative.

I think it would be a help if our democratic leadership could decide on a stand about the so-called mosque and stick with it. Obama has issued three different takes on this so far. but then he’s only talked about it three times. People as disparate as the ever-ineffectual Harry Reid and the always effectual Howard Dean have spoken out against building the Islamic center near Ground Zero.

Meanwhile, we are at war in Islamic countries (we’re still in Iraq, we’re in Afghanistan and we’re in Pakistan–all Muslim theocracies. Well, not true–Iraq has no government at all.) and the reason is still ostensibly the 9/11 attacks. So there is a connection to Ground Zero, whether we want to acknowledge it our not.

We signed onto this war nearly a decade ago, the day after 9/11. And now we apparently are always going to be in Afghanistan. We should just take a deep breath and recognize that this is way beyond Vietnam and no matter who is in the White House, he is going to keep this war going. After all, Obama ran as the anti-war candidate.

Last night on the news we were told that the troops exiting Iraq would be going to Afghanistan.

Like we didn’t know this.

We’re off building Afghanistan (or not) to a gigantic financial tune while ten percent of Americans are unemployed and who knows how many more are suffering from underemployment.

We need some answers. If anything is behind the controversy over the so-called mosque, it’s what we can’t say and can’t protest: We want out of Afghanistan, we want a president who will take some action on the suffering Americans are coping with. It sounds woefully trite, but we need some nation-building at home. Maybe we could drop the mosque discourse and move on to issues that have substance and are not just a prop for our real concerns?—VAB

First Lesbian Supreme Court Justice?

victoria — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 23:07:36 +0000

. Elena Kagan was sworn in on August 7, 2010 as the newest and youngest member of the U.S. Supreme Court, replacing the court’s most liberal and longest-serving member of the current court, Justice John Paul Stevens. Kagan is the 112th justice and only the fourth woman in the Court’s history. Kagan will havea formal investiture ceremony before a special sitting of the Court on October 1, 2010.
The question most queer Americans want to know, however, is this: Is Kagan the U.S. Supreme Court’s first lesbian justice?

Like President Obama’s previous High Court pick, Sonia Sotomayor, the Court’s first Latina justice, controversy swirled around Kagan’s nomination from the outset.

From the left came concerns that Kagan was too conservative and dangerous on civil liberties issues. Many progressives noted that her support for some of the more controversial elements of President Obama’s legal strategies (she was Obama’s Solicitor General and the first woman to hold that post) meant that she was at best centrist and at worst a conservative. Progressive legal scholar Jonathan Turley, in a May 10 column, termed her nomination “the last nail in the liberal coffin.” In elucidating his concerns about Kagan, he said, “For many liberals and civil libertarians, the Kagan nomination is a terrible act of betrayal after the President campaigned so heavily on the issue of the Supreme Court during his campaign. [Obama] is now replacing a liberal icon [Stevens] with someone who has testified that she does not believe in core protections for accused individuals in the war on terror. During her confirmation hearing Kagan testified that she believed that anyone suspected of helping finance Al Qaeda should be stripped of protections and held under indefinite detention without a trial — agreeing with the Bush Administration.”

The right had different concerns, among them her lack of actual courtroom experience. Kagan, unlike most justices, has never been a judge and has also never argued a case before the Supreme Court. She did, however, serve as Special Counsel to President Clinton.

This lack of actual courtroom experience bothered the right, but more concerning to the right was the fact that she had, as Dean of Harvard Law School, upheld a ban on military recruitment at the campus because she felt the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on lesbians and gay men in the military was discriminatory. She urged students to protest the DADT policy. The right believed this made Kagan anti-military.

Both sides had concerns yet Kagan’s record in her actions and writings do put her more to the right than left of center.

Then there was the queer controversy. Not the DADT issue, but Kagan’s own sexual orientation.

The New York Daily News put a photo of a younger Kagan playing softball–the universal lesbian sport–on the front page after her nomination. The implication that she was a lesbian was clear. Rumors had long swirled that Kagan was indeed a lesbian and people on both sides, left and right, agreed that she *looks* like a lesbian.

Harvard friends who requested anonymity told reporters that she was gay. Others “defended” her, saying she dated men, but the relationships were “secret.”
And then the White House, in an extraordinary–and wildly homophobic even for a consistently back-pedaling on LGBT issues president–move, issued a statement that Kagan’s sexuality was off limits.

Why? In 2010, why should anyone’s sexual orientation be kept a state secret–literally–by the White House? Why should a soon-to-be-sitting justice refuse to acknowledge her sexual orientation? Why the homophobic smoke-screen?
Back when Clarence Thomas underwent his own judiciary committee hearings for a position on the Court, he asserted that being accused of sexual harassment by a former colleague, Anita Hill, was akin to a “high-tech lynching.”

Hill was badgered and abused far more than Thomas in those hearings, and inferences that she was a lesbian were made repeatedly, most notably by Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, who referred to her “proclivities.”

But the issue was a legal one: Did Clarence Thomas, soon to be a justice, sexually harass a colleague? The hearings found in Thomas’ favor.

The hearings for Kagan ignored her sexual orientation. But should they have done? How is it not germane, when cases will be coming to the Court in the next few years dealing with DADT, DOMA and same-sex marriage, whether or not she is actually a lesbian or simply an unmarried heterosexual woman? And if she is merely an unmarried heterosexual woman, why doesn’t she just say so? Why the secrecy? Why the need for the White House to shield her from any discourse on the subject? Other justices aren’t hiding their sexual orientation.

One reason the issue is pressing is because of Kagan’s disturbing stances on DOMA and same-sex marriage. If she’s a closet lesbian, she has more to “prove” to her colleagues on the Court in terms of her lack of bias. Which could mean bending over backwards in the opposite direction from civil rights for lesbians and gay men.

Consider that during her confirmation hearing for Solicitor General Kagan threw queers under the legal bus, saying that “There is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage”–the exact opposite of what the Prop 8 case found.

At the same hearing Kagan was asked about DOMA (under which states do not have to recognize same-sex marriages from other states although in May a Massachusetts federal judge said DOMA was unconstitutional). Kagan said she would defend the act if “there was any reasonable basis to do so.”

Also of concern for women is Kagan’s stance on abortion. During the Clinton Administration, she argued against the legal right to third-trimester abortion, which is almost always performed to save the life of the mother.

There’s no doubt that Kagan is smart, and as she showed in many of her responses during the judiciary hearings, quite witty. But many conservatives have been funny and smart, even as they have undercut our most basic legal tenets.

The jury is still out on Kagan, of course, since she has yet to even hear her first case. But the secrecy surrounding her personal life is baffling and concerning because it speaks to a problem with the conservative nature of the Court itself and also of the Obama Administration which has upheld so much of the most problematic civil liberties violations of the Bush Administration.

Queers should take note: the most offensive legal discourse from the High Court came from Byron White–appointed by John F. Kennedy–who wrote the opinion in the 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick which contended that consensual gay sex was illegal and immoral. The justice who wrote the scathing dissent in the case, Harry Blackmun (who also authored the landmark Roe v. Wade case), was a Republican nominated by Richard Nixon.

The justice to overturn Bowers v. Hardwick with the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas opinion was Anthony Kennedy, another Republican nominated by George H.W. Bush. Kennedy wrote in that case that penalizing lesbians and gay men from having consensual sex was depriving them of the “pursuit of happiness” as illuminated in the Declaration of Independence.

In short, nominees are not always reflective of the party from which they have been nominated.

When Kagan dons her robes on the first Monday in October, we won’t know if she’s queer or straight. But we will know that she has a sketchy record on LGBT issues. So whether she is or isn’t the first lesbian Supreme Court justice, she’s definitely not someone we can count on to uphold queer civil rights.

Has Priest Scandal Killed Catholic Schools?

victoria — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 21:44:02 +0000

Mention Catholic schools and you will get a plethora of responses, particularly from those of us who attended them. Comedians have made Catholic schools and the nuns who taught in them a staple of stand up. Yet the fact is, a Catholic school education gets a far worse rap than it deserves.
I’ve told my share of jokes about my own Catholic school education. But as critical as I have been of my Church and its hierarchy over the years, there is much of value that I got from that education.
The Catholic grade school I attended for nine years, Cecilian Academy in Mount Airy, closed last year due to declining enrollment. The high school had closed in the late 1980s. The school now houses the Khepera Charter school.
The first time I drove past the school and saw the sign out front had changed from Cecilian to Khephera, I got a pang of sadness. It was the end of an era, for me and for all the other girls who attended the school over six decades.
But Cecilian was far from the only casualty among Philadelphia Catholic schools. In recent years, June has brought announcements from the Archdiocese that some school–or several–are closing. But perhaps no closing was as shocking as the one that came last month when Cardinal Dougherty High School held its final graduation.
Cardinal Dougherty, which opened in 1956, was once touted as the largest Catholic school in the world with an enrollment of over 6,000 students at its zenith. More than 40,000 have graduated from the school, but this June’s seniors were the last. When the school closed its doors in June, only 600 students attended. Enrollment had declined by more than 40 percent in the past decade.
The decision by the Archdiocese to close Dougherty was roundly criticized by students, alumni and other Philadelphians. The Archdiocese cited the high overhead of big schools like Dougherty built to house a much larger retinue of students.
But the closing of Cardinal Dougherty hurts more than the nostalgia of families for whom generations at the school were a given. The fact is, Philadelphia is being drained of its best schools and Dougherty was one of those. It’s an attrition that’s hard to take.
Gov. Ed Rendell has championed education in the state and made sure the budgets have reflected more monies for education. But for students in urban areas like Philadelphia, public schools have most often ranged from bad to worse. Many parents, Catholic or not, felt that the Catholic school system offered welcome alternatives to the sometimes down-right alarming public school choices.
When I attended Catholic school there were few non-Catholics and even fewer non-whites in the schools. But in the past few decades, Catholic schools in Philadelphia–unlike the public schools which are more segregated than were schools in the 1950s–have been the picture of both diversity and tolerance. The Catholic schools have had none of the racial and ethnic conflicts like those last year at South Philadelphia High School that have tarnished the city’s reputation and sent students fleeing to private alternatives.
At its closing in mid-June, Dougherty was the prototype of that diversity, with an enrollment that was more than 40 percent non-Catholic and with more than 30 countries represented in its student body. And no gang fights or flash mobs.
What is both saddening and infuriating about the closing of these schools is that a major reason the church cannot afford to maintain them is because so much money has gone to compensating victims of the child sex abuse scandal. It’s a bitter irony that children–Catholic and not–are being victimized in yet another way by those crimes. Dioceses like those in Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles paying settlements to sexual assault victims of priests have less money to subsidize schools like Dougherty and the 174 that have closed nationwide in recent years. Complicating things: fewer subsidies means tuition costs must be increased. The ongoing recession has contributed to the declining enrollments. Parents who might once have wanted to send their girls to Cecilian have opted for tuition-free charter schools like the one now housed in Cecilian’s old site.
The closing of these Catholic schools, which have been for many the poor person’s private school and a refuge from urban problems, has presented a dilemma for parents unhappy with the quality of the public schools open to them. What alternatives remain?
The National Catholic Education Association notes that enrollment in Catholic schools has declined 20 percent in the past decade. But so has enrollment in public schools. However, public schools have a tax subsidy the Catholic schools do not.
It’s easy to say that everyone should have a secular education and so public school is the best alternative. But the issue isn’t secularism, it’s standards, and the standards that have been set by Philadelphia’s Archdiocesan school system are, quite simply, better for the students than their public school alternatives.
Which leads inevitably to the question: Why can’t public schools replicate what Catholic schools like Dougherty have done in terms of both educational excellence and diversity training and maintenance? Why can’t a school like South Philly high boast the same equilibrium as Dougherty did?
The closing of these schools and the intensity of emotion those closings have generated should provide food for thought for those working to better the educational standard in Philadelphia and other urban areas. How can secular schools take that fealty and transfer it to the public arena?
The fact is, Philadelphia can’t afford to lose any more good schools. Nor can the city afford to lose schools with racial diversity that are also harmonious. The loss of Dougherty isn’t just a loss for the families who sent several generations of kids there, it’s a loss to a city known more for its bad schools than its good ones.
As Rendell prepares to leave Harrisburg and a new mayor’s race looms in Philadelphia, Philadelphians should question what a new governor or mayor will do to make Philly schools better, more progressive and more diverse. Because without those changes to the foundation of the school system, Philly students will continue to be short-changed in ways Dougherty students never were.—VAB

on hiatus due to illness

victoria — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 18:16:31 +0000

What Is Really Scary Isn’t Palin

victoria — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 20:35:01 +0000

I have been busy starting an independent publishing house for kid’s books and trying not to go crazy over what’s happening in the Gulf and what’s not happening in Washington. Then this morning I get an email in which a friend asks:

Did you see the cover of Newsweek this week? “St. Sarah” (Palin). Scary as all get out.

I let out the same sigh I let out every time I get an over-wrought email or read an over-wrought post about Palin somewhere. But this one does prompt me to respond and to think about the comment which came, as the “Oh no!!!!!! Sarah Palin–run for your lives!!!!” comments always do, from someone who has center left politics. (And please don’t tell me there’s a left in America. There isn’t. There’s a center left, there’s a center, there’s a center right, there’s a right and there’s an extreme right. Alas, no extreme left. That handful of octogenerian Commies in Greenwich Village still arguing Trotsky v. Stalin does not count. Seriously. When we get a left here like we had in the 1960s or like much of Europe still has, then we can talk leftists. Until then it’s center left definition for you.)

Here’s what I think about Sarah Palin. I don’t care about her. She’s pretty, she’s charismatic, she has great skin, she wears clothes beautifully. But I do not care about her or whether Inside Edition thinks she had a boob job because they can’t tell the difference between a form-fitting t-shirt and a suit jacket. I do not care who she supports or what she says about the Gulf. She’s marginal. She’s relevant only in as much as she is the prop to keep Obama from completely gutting his presidency. Without Sarah Palin, what would Obama do? He’d have to go back to hating Hillary. He’d have to find a new deflection from his own massive mis-steps.

That’s what I think about Palin.

I just don’t have the Palin Paranoia. I can’t muster it.That syndrome comes largely from Obama supporters who can’t let go of the fact that he’s turned out to be everything the Hillary supporters said he was during the primary. I think Palin Paranoia is all about deflecting our attention from the real problem, which is our actual elected officials, starting with the President. Palin’s not an elected official. She didn’t win. She left her elected office in Alaska before her term was up. It doesn’t even matter what the reasons were–she left, which was the kiss of death for any other run for public office. But she doesn’t want to be in public office. Why should she when she has so much personal power–and money–without any of the sturm und drang and actual hard work that goes with being a public servant? She can go here and there–or not–and say whatever and be loved or hated and then go to sleep at night with no worries. No state to run, no country to run. Her biggest problem right now is that her daughter Bristol has allegedly reconcilled with the despicable cad who is the father of her baby.

No one can hold Palin accountable for anything she says because really, she only answers to her fan base, which is large but also largely marginal, and the press which can’t decide if it loves or hates her but does know it likes her on magazine covers because she sells. Well.

So why the center left’s obsession with her? Sure a lot of people like her–she’s incredibly charismatic. but she has no real power. Why has anyone forgotten that? To paraphrase Gwen Stephani, she’s just a girl in the world. Obama is president. He has he power. Doesn’t use it for squat, but he does have it.

Here’s the question–or rather questions–I want to ask everyone who quakes over Palin. Is she the person perpetrating torture in your name? No. That’s Obama.

Is she the person running three wars? (Yes, three, since Pakistan is a separate country. Oh and we bombed Yemen this morning, but it’s a Saturday and everyone ignores the news on a Saturday, so does that count?) No, the person running the three wars and bombing Yemen is Obama.

Is Palin the person who screwed up in the Gulf? No, still Obama.

Is Palin the person who has let the nation languish at ten percent unemployment while trying to appease the Republicans? No, that’s Obama.

Is Palin the person making deals behind closed doors with Big Oil and Big Coal? Again–Obama.

Is Palin the person who made us endless promises for a transparent government with no lobbyists and then proceeded to put lobbyists in half of his cabinet? Still–Obama.

Is Palin the person who moved the U.S. Supreme Court to the right when we all thought he would move it to the left by nominating two center-right justices to replace two liberal justices? Sadly, inevitably, and for decades to come, that too is Obama.

So when I think about Palin, I think the focus on her from the center-left Obama supporters like moveon and the DSCC and Code Pink and people who laud themselves as progressives is all about getting our attention off Obama and saying, “No—look over there! THAT’S what’s scary.”

Nope, what’s scary is that we elected Obama. All of us who voted for him, myself included. So we can’t complain like we could about Bush. We didn’t vote for Bush so we could sigh and point and show disdain for eight long years. We could talk about what would happen when a Democrat was in the White House again.

Okay, well, now the Democrat is in. Has been in. And look at where we are. It was Obama who allowed Palin to hijack the health care reform conversation and turn it into a conversation about death panels. It was Obama who gutted the public option. It was Obama who spent months wooing Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, the joint Republican swine senators of Maine, for their puny votes as Republicans for health care reform (because Maine isn’t going under with poor people who don’t have health care, no it isn’t) and totally ignored the fact that he was losing votes from his own party until it was too late.

We had to put up with eight years of “The Decider” and now we have two more years to go with the “Unable to Decide-er.”

Much as we might want to blame Palin for what’s wrong in America, she’s just barely even a symptom. Whereas Obama has become the actual complaint. If you can look at nothing else, look at the Gulf. That is Obama’s Katrina. And it didn’t have to be.

Those of us struggling to retain some measure of progressivism in the face of the current centrist presidency that we voted in need to remember that Palin is Obama’s best friend right now. He needs her more desperately than John McCain ever did. She’s the person Obama’s devotees hold up as a caution: ”This is why we have to support Obama!” As if the only choices left to us as American voters are Obama or Palin.

Wrong.

It’s not Palin v. Obama. It never was. Palin isn’t running for president. And even her staunchest supporters aren’t sure that’s what they want for/from her. Palin is a king maker. And, apparently, an un-king maker. Seven of the ten candidates she supported and put her arms around won in their respective primaries. She wants that role and it’s a good role for her. She also points fingers at Obama regularly. Which, if Obama were doing the job he said he would do, wouldn’t matter one whit.

And yet it does. Which is always the problem when the Emperor has no clothes. It doesn’t really matter who points it out. It’s the fact that matters.

Still, come 2012 Obama is going to be running not against the perky gal from Alaska, but against some stalwart of the new Republican vanguard. Someone who will point to the failures of the Obama Administration much as Obama pointed to the failures of the Bush Administration and ask that inevitable question Bill Clinton posed nearly two decades ago: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

Obama isn’t going to ever be running against Sarah Palin. He’s going to be running against his own record. We voted him in with no experience because we were against experience. Our experience made us distrust experience. Experience looked like John McCain and that wasn’t the kind of experience we wanted.

And I do not regret my vote against McCain. I don’t even regret my vote for Obama. I regret Obama’s inability to lead, to be decisive, to do anything at all without a quorum or committee holding his hand and without looking at the Republicans first for their permission.

In the Palin v. Obama debate the facts are clear: neither deserves to be president. Alas, Obama is president. And that’s what’s causing the problems we are having. Did Obama make all the mess that needs cleaning up? Hardly, which is something both the Republicans and Democrats need to remember. But he hasn’t been a good clean-up guy, either, as the Gulf oil spill has made abundantly, tragically, endlessly clear.

Palin isn’t interested in being president. She never was. She’s said it a gazillion times. She likes being where she is–making a lot of money, making a lot of press and with the Democrats intent on keeping her solidly in the limelight for as long as they need her to take the heat off Obama, which will be right up until the November 2012 election, if things keep going the way they have been.

So do I find Sarah Palin scary? Hardly. Obama–the guy I voted for–doing nothing about anything—now that’s scary. Because we have real things to be scared about–the unending wars, a shattered economy where some people will never get their jobs back, unending torture, Elaine Kagan as a shoe-in for the Supreme Court, housing foreclosures as high as ever, a Gulf oil spill no one seems able to fix.

In the panoply of things to be scared of, Sarah Palin doesn’t even register on the political Richter Scale. And anyone who thinks she does, really isn’t paying attention.

We’ve got real problems in America. The question we need to be posing is, Who do we get to fix them? since the guy who said he was going to do just that seems to have abdicated much like Sarah Palin did her governorship. The only thing is, Obama hasn’t left his office, He’s just not really in it.— VAB

Quid Pro Quo

victoria — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 17:33:28 +0000

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has,appropriately, if belatedly, become the lead story in all news media. The scenes from the Gulf are heart-breaking, the stories increasingly disturbing and tragic.
It’s understandable, then, that the issues of government accountability and the transparency promised and lauded by Candidate Obama, but ignored and dismissed by President Obama have been relegated specifically to the Obama Administration’s role in the oil spill and subsequent environmental disaster.
But for Pennsylvania voters, there’s an issue that has been buried on the back pages, but which can be neither ignored nor dismissed.
According to Joe Sestak, the Democratic candidate for the Senate and a current member of the House, he was offered a job by the Obama Administration through former President Bill Clinton to stay out of the Pennsylvania Senate race. The Administration backed Sen. Arlen Specter and did not want a primary fight.
Sestak first raised the topic in an interview in late February where it seemed to fizzle and die–although he repeated the accusation as an example of how he was not a Washington insider when his numbers were in the single digits.
But with his win against Specter, the story resurfaced. Democrats waved their hands as if it was just so much gnattery, Republicans said it was an example of the corruption of the Obama Administration and legal scholars on both sides squirmed at the harsh reality: there’s an actual federal code prohibiting just such quid pro quo actions.
The squirminess transferred to the President himself when in a press conference two weeks ago–his first in ten months–a reporter went off the topic of the oil spill to ask about the Sestak story.
Instead of being up front and transparent as he should have been from the outset, Obama said that a response would be “forthcoming” on the subject, which was, he said, being reviewed internally.
Oh.
The answer finally came on May 29–over two months after Sestak first made the claim. Yes, the offer had been made. But it was not improper and no big deal.
Wrong.
It doesn’t take an anti-Obama conservative to understand the law. Consider the response from a well-known legal expert who is not a conservative–law professor and constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley.
Turley was stunned by the revelation and said so in a column mere hours after the White House finally released its months-in-coming “yeah, we offered him a job, so what?” response.
  Turley noted: “It is remarkable how quickly Democrats have forgiven such abuses and condemned those who object as simply naive. This is precisely what moral relativists in politics want of voters: to treat all political corruption as a fixed reality of government.”
           Turley went on to say, “The White House is not allowed to trade government positions for political advantages. It is particularly abusive to hand out positions in the intelligence field–particularly with the continued intelligence failures of the last year. What makes this even more outrageous is that Sestak did not even qualify for the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board [the position offered to Sestak].”
What Turley didn’t know when he wrote those words was that Sestak was not the only candidate to be offered a job to stay out of a primary.
On June 2, Andrew Romanoff, who is challenging incumbent Sen. Michael Bennett in Colorado, said he had been offered one of three positions by Obama’s deputy Chief of Staff. Romanoff said he was told two high-ranking positions at USAID and the director’s position at the U.S. Trade and Development Agency “might be available to me were I not pursuing the Senate race.”
Sestak should feel undersold: The U.S. Trade and Development Agency director’s position has a $55 million budget and a staff of 78 people. It also requires Senate confirmation.
            There have been numerous–and unanswered–questions about what job Sestak was really offered. Most insiders agree he was actually offered the job of Secretary of the Navy because the current SoN is considering leaving. Given the choices offered to Romanoff, it’s difficult to believe that Sestak would have been offered so much less.
The Romanoff revelation only serves to raise more questions about the Sestak debacle. It also raises serious questions about what role the President has been playing in the primaries.
For Pennsylvanians, the questions need answers. Sestak only made the offer public in an effort to raise his own numbers in the polls. But Sestak is a Democrat and if elected would answer to the current president–also a Democrat–as well as to the people of Pennsylvania. The Obama Administration was wrong and likely criminal in offering the job to Sestak.
The blowback for Sestak is that he now looks even sleazier than he did during the primary. Sestak has a history of not answering questions. Pennsylvanians still want to know why he was forced to resign from the only job he ever had, the Navy. Sestak says what he said when pressed for details about Obama’s job offer: it’s not relevant.
This surly attitude that both the Obama White House and our own candidate have toward voters is more than a little disconcerting. We expected it from the likes of Bush and Cheney, but this was supposed to be a new day in government and a new era of transparency. Sestak himself said his election was a “victory for democracy.” So why does it look so much like old-school Beltway politics as usual?
The fact is, the right shouldn’t be leading the calls for an independent investigation of these quid pro quo offers–the Democrats should.
Think about it for ten seconds–never mind who you supported in the Pennsylvania primary or who you might support in the Colorado primary. Who do you want to choose who runs or doesn’t? The President of the U.S. or the voters?
This isn’t a monarchy. We choose our politicians by voting, not by presidential fiat. And it would seem that if any more such scandals are revealed about this White House, voters are going to choose someone else come 2012, no matter what Mr. Obama might have to say.

The Sestak Scandal Heats Up

victoria — Sat, 29 May 2010 21:10:20 +0000

One thing I dislike about the blogosphere–left, center and right–is that people tend to write about things they know nothing about. An opinion is not a fact. Never was, never will be. The case of Joe Sestak v. Barack Obama is a clear case in point.

The so-called left blogosphere has been a big supporter of Joe Sestak, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania. (I say so-called left, because most never seem to get on Obama for all the things he does that when Bush did them, brought about screaming, recriminations, much gnashing of teeth and cries that it was the End of Democracy as We Know It. Now? Still torturing–oh well. Not our problem, since a Democrat is doing it.)

Why was the center left for Sestak? Because he wasn’t Arlen Specter, the incumbent senator who was a life-long Republican who turned Democrat a year before the primary.

No left-leaning Pennsylvanian was pro-Specter in their hearts, even though 47.5 percent of us voted for him in the primary. Those who voted for Specter just disliked Sestak more and we already knew who Specter was. And Specter was almost always good for Pennsylvania.

That said, Sestak is the candidate now. So why is he trying to blow up his candidacy? Why is he fingering the President–who’s in his own party–as a behind-the-scenes demagogue who lies to the press and does shady quid pro quo deals?

Those of us who have watched and written about Sestak from home base for several years are pretty sure why–because the guy really doesn’t know what he’s doing. He loves the limelight (which he accused Specter of, but which he’s equally guilt of) and he really doesn’t much like to go to Congress and do his job. (Despite running as a Washington outsider, he has spent his entire adult life from the age of 23 working for the federal government–first as a Navy man for 31 years until he was forced to resign in 2005, then as a member of the House since 2007. That’s a Washington insider. Really.) He has the worst atttendance record of any member of the House who hasn’t been seriously ill.

So why would we want him in the Senate?

The meme in Pennsylvania was that he would bring something new to the table. But no one asked the compelling question: What?

Sestak ran on not being Specter. He did a good job of that. But now he’s out on his own, he can’t use Specter as his prop. So what does he do? He flames President Obama.

Way to go, Joe!

If the Obama Administration offered Sestak a job, as Sestak claims, to stay out of the primary, what was the rationale? More’s the point–what was the job?

As Pennsylvanians who are paying attention know, Sestak doesn’t like to answer questions. When asked repeatedly why he was forced to resign from the Navy, he literally waves his hand in the air and says it doesn’t matter. Really? It was your only job in your life except for your three absentee-filled years in the House. Why can’t your constituents and potential constituents know why you were forced to leave it? Not answering makes you look guilty of something to supporters as well as denigrators. So just give us the facts.

Ditto with this job issue which Sestak raised and then backed away from like a bad smell. An accusation of bribery against an administration that has pledged transparency isn’t nothing–no matter what the left blogosphere says. It doesn’t take a salivating Republican to see that there is something off here. But what it is?

Non-Pennsylvanians and bloggers lauding Sestak for ”standing up to the man”—who in this case, let me remind everyone is Barack Obama–really need to get at least a little bit of a grip.

Sestak ain’t no outsider. He’s a career militarist whose support for both wars is well-known and well-documented. He was to the right of the newly Democratic Arlen Specter and he is to the right of Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, who the same people who are lauding Sestak are trying to crucify. (Being a fan of neither, I’m merely confused by this. Pick a stance and stick with it, people.)

We all get that this is an anti-incumbency year. But Sestak is an incumbent. Why has everyone forgotten this?

Let’s say for the sake of the argument currently raging that Sestak was indeed offered a job by Bill Clinton (because as everyone knows, Barack Obama just adores Mr. Clinton and always has him do such secretive work for him) so that Sestak would stay out of the race. This would be the same Bill Clinton whom Sestak once worked for.

What was the reason for this? Why would Obama commit himself on paper to such a thing? Specter didn’t have anything on Obama and he could consider himself lucky to have the Democratic establishment, starting with Obama, support him.

But they did.

That didn’t require forcing Sestak out of the race. Or offering him a job. So what’s the real story here–because both parties have made this a story and now the Republicans once again get to wag their fingers at the Democrats because of what is either a cover-up (when you refiuse to give the facts yet say they don’t matter, it looks and smells like a cover-up) or an act of the most extreme stupidity, it’s difficult to imagine that intellects of the caliber of both Obama and Clinton were involved in it.

Sestak has proven one thing in this tempest: He can’t be trusted. He kisses and tells just enough to make everyone wonder about the person he’s been necking with–in this case, Obama.

Someone is lying. Does it matter who it is? Yes. It matters because in the fifth most populous state, we deserve some answers from the person who wants to be our senator for the next six years.

As a Pennsylvanian who voted for Obama and has to consider voting for Sestak in November, I want to know what happened and why. I also want to know why the President felt the need to dissemble in a specifically legalistic fashion about this question when it came up in his press conference last week.

There is only a scandal because Sestak and Obama have together created one. If there was a real bribe, that’s fraud and a crime–Sestak is, after all, a paid government official. If there wasn’t, then Sestak is a liar and a cheat and why would any Pennsylvanian want to vote for him?

One person comes out of this smelling like a rose: Republican candidate Pat Toomey, who is running a clean campaign based on merit and not on smears. He has refused to say anything about this debacle–which gives him points in a state with two blue tips and a solid red center.

As I said before: Way to go, Joe!

Sestak and Obama need to clean this mess up now. The longer it festers, the longer Pennsylvanians have to turn to a different candidate. Or at least against Sestak.

As for the blogosphere: Get your facts straight before you minimize the damage that’s being done to both Obama’s and Sestak’s credibility in Pennsylvania–which is not just Philadelphia’s Democrats. While you are off on a different scandal and a different gambit months from now, Pennsylvanians will still have to vote in November–and live with the consequences.–VAB

Claiming Identities They Taught Us to Despise

victoria — Sat, 29 May 2010 18:59:36 +0000

Writing about Pride Month often seems a variation on those elementary school essays “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.”

“What Does Pride Mean to Me?”

I think of Pride as a time not just of celebration but of reflection–serious reflection. As an historian, activist and journalist, Pride makes me think not so much about how far we’ve come, but about all those things not yet achieved.

It’s easy to focus all one’s attention on those acronyms–DADT and DOMA. They do tend to stop one cold when we start thinking about civil rights. But if we had marriage equality and military equity tomorrow, we’d still have to address other, less obvious elements of Pride.

Months ago, when I first saw Colin Firth’s Oscar-nominated performance in Tom Ford’s adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s “A Single Man,” I thought about how fortunate I was to have come out as a teenager soon after Stonewall. I never went through life in the closet, but I’ve known myriad people who have.

In “A Single Man,” Firth’s character, George Falconer, is emotionally tortured. Jim, his partner of 16 years and the love of his life, is killed in a car wreck. Instead of being able to grieve his loss, George must hide it. There is no societal recognition of what these men were to each other anywhere. None. The alleged “single” man–really a widower–leads a half life because his real life is hidden.

The film is set in the 1960s, but what is most shocking about it is how little has changed in 40 years. Many queers still live hidden lives of quiet desperation and self-loathing more than 40 years after Stonewall. One reason for this is because “Pride” is neither endemic to nor intrinsic in our culture–while homophobia is both.

In 1973, right after I graduated from high school, the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders) finally dropped homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.[1] That was a couple of years late for me. I had already been incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital for being a lesbian when I was 15. Being queer was a mental illness that therapy and drugs would change–or at least that was the theory at the time.

I was not the only teenaged lesbian in the place, nor was I the only lesbian I knew who would end up there. Two of my best friends from high school got incarcerated for being queer just as I had been.

As I got older, I met more and more lesbians and gay men who’d had the same experience of forced “treatment” in mental hospitals for being queer.

How often does this still happen? It’s slightly more difficult to put your teenager in a mental hospital than it was when I was a kid, but only slightly. Laws now protect adults from “inessential” incarceration in mental hospitals, but parents can still do what they want with their children under the guise of helping them. A 72-hour hold can easily turn into lengthy reparative therapy.

Reparative–the very name makes clear how wrong its proponents find being queer–therapy or conversion therapy asserts that sexual orientation can be changed. (Although I’ll note that there are no groups espousing that heterosexuals change their orientation to queer.)

NARTH, the NationalAssociation for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, asserts: “We respect the right of all individuals to choose their own destiny. NARTH is a professional, scientific organization that offers hope to those who struggle with unwanted homosexuality. As an organization, we disseminate educational information, conduct and collect scientific research, promote effective therapeutic treatment, and provide referrals to those who seek our assistance.” [2]

NARTH will be holding a convention and “training institute” in Philadelphia Nov. 5, 6 and 7, 2010 in Philadelphia. The group has such a large following that it is now publishing its journal in Spanish as well as English and doing global recruiting.

One member of the NARTH board, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, has appeared on the “Dr. Phil” show “debunking” the idea that sexual orientation is innate. [3]

NARTH presents itself as a scientifically based organization. Its director and board of directors are doctors, Ph.D.s and MSWs. They argue the “science” of how same-sex attraction is just a psycho-social misfiring that can be corrected with therapy.
That was the “science” in 1971, when my parents put me in a mental hospital to “cure” me. The cure didn’t work. Nor did it work for the many friends, acquaintances and colleagues of mine over the years who’ve had similar experiences.

Yet 31 years post-Stonewall and 27 years since the DSM revised its pathological depiction of homosexuality, society remains stuck in a time warp. In the larger society as well as portions of our own community, the assertion that same-sex sexual orientation is a choice—not something as immutable and thus unchangeable as the color of one’s skin—continues to be promulgated. There is no convention nor training session anywhere in America this year for the “conversion” of blacks and Latinos to being white. If there were, the outrage would be universal (even, one presumes, among racists).

Where is the outrage over the lie that lesbians and gay men have chosen to be queer and thus can just as easily and readily choose not to be so? Or should do so?
Can we have a true celebration of something called “Pride” if a percentage of our own queer demographic continues to want to “cure” itself? What of all those kids growing up lesbian and gay who are being sent the same message kids of my own generation were sent–that being queer is anomalous and that anomalies are wrong? Will they end up in psych wards because their parents were repeatedly told their child could be “fixed” or end up in psych wards because the pressure to be “normal” was just too great and they attempted suicide, because many of us did that as well?

Pride is about learning to accept ourselves for who we are–queer. For some of us that journey was completed years ago. For others still in the closet or still trying to “cure” themselves, the homophobic message that we are not fully realized people if we are queer continues to haunt. Every week another politician or public figure is caught in a queer scandal. Why? Because so many of us don’t accept ourselves or each other if we are not straight.

“Pride” is a double-edged sword. We can have our celebrations, but we also must recognize that the work begun at Stonewall is far from over. With Pride comes responsibility–the responsibility to continue to fight these damaging misrepresentations of who we are as we once fought the DSM pathologizing of our love for each other. Forty-one years after Stonewall, we are still being denied not just our civil rights and equal standing in society, but we are still being told we can–and should–choose to be something other than who we are.

Celebrate Pride–but keep on fighting, because the battle for our full personhood has yet to be won.—VAB

1. www.psychiatryonline.com/DSMPDF/DSM-II_Homosexuality
2. http://www.narth.com/index.html
3. http://www.narth.com/index.html

Destroying the Gulf Coast–Again

victoria — Wed, 26 May 2010 20:11:29 +0000

The scenes from the Gulf are heart-breaking for anyone with a heart.

Alas, that seems not to include anyone from British Petroleum, Transoean or even the Obama Administration.

There are myriad questions to ask about who was and is to blame for the explosion that killed eleven and injured 17 and the subsequent oil spill that has sent nearly 100 million gallons of oil into the beautiful Gulf and is destroying everything in its murky path.

I’ve been seriously angered by the media coverage–or lack of same–of the Gulf oil spill which, on May 21, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar called the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.
TV is how the majority of Americans get their news. Plus, a video really is worth a thousand words. Would we have ever even known about Darfur, for example, without those TV images?

So why has it taken 36 days for the TV coverage of this disaster to extend beyond flyovers showing the breadth of the oil spill or close-ups of the oil invading the wetlands?

Start at the beginning.

When the West Virginia mining disaster that killed 29 people happened in early April, every national news anchor was at the scene within 24 hours and stayed for days. Interviews were done with miners, families of miners and mining company executives. Viewers got to know how mining towns work, how miners and their families live, what drives communities based on the coal industry.

The Obama Administration seemed to take its cue from the extended media coverage. President Obama even attended the memorial service held for the dead miners.

Eleven people were killed in the Gulf oil rig explosion on April 20 and 17 others were seriously injured. In the first days after the explosion, there were searches for the missing and presumed dead riggers. That garnered some news attention, but not the media blitz of the mining disaster. There was no memorial service attended by the President. When that service was held May 24, neither the President nor Vice President were in attendance. We only learned the names of the victims, their ages, and anything about their lives and their families on the day of the memorial.

Where was the media? We know as little now as we did on April 20 about what it is to be an oil rigger–widely considered to be one of the most dangerous jobs in the nation.

I remember quite distinctly ABC news anchor Diane Sawyer grilling mining execs about the WV tragedy. Where was the comparable reportage on the BP and Transocean execs responsible for the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history? Why the difference in coverage? She didn’t hit the Gulf until May 24–and then, only for a day.
We’re not targeting Sawyer–other news anchors are equally to blame (Katie Couric went to the Gulf the same day Sawyer did, but stayed for two days)–but Sawyer does have the top newscast in the nation. She personally interviewed the families of so many miners. Why did it take her more than a month to speak to a single grieving family member of an oil rigger? The teams covering the Gulf disaster have mostly been third and fourth echelon reporters. Why?
There are no ready answers, but news you’re not seeing is sometimes tantamount to a news coverup.

Yes, the Gulf oil spill is still a lead story on all national TV news outlets. But it’s the quality of that reporting that is in question. When oil washed up on a place where we used to spend Thanksgivings when we lived in the Gulf–Grande Isle–we thought our heart might just break. And seeing the oil-coated pelicans and turtles. Ghastly.

What has been most horrifying, however, is seeing Pierre Cousteau, son of the noted Jacques Cousteau, diving in haz-mat gear and giving a play-by-play about what is happening beneath the surface of the water. If we think that this isn’t going to impact the nation and beyond for years to come, think again. When Louisiana’s Tea Party Gov. Bobby Jindal looks like an environmentalist compared with the Obama White House, something is amiss.

The cost to the nation from this oil spill is so extreme, it’s truly incalculable. Begin with the actual loss of life then move directly to the loss of ecosystems, the loss of fisheries, the loss of wetlands, the loss of an economy based on those things and you have not just an ecological disaster but a social, cultural and economic one as well. Whole communities along the Gulf rely on fishing, shrimping, trawling for oysters and crabs. It’s not just a way of life, it’s a matter of economic survival. And then there are the beach economies all along the Gulf where the oil slick and tar globs threaten to destroy yet another aspect of both the environment and the economy.

In the coming weeks the hurricanes and tropical storms will begin–hurricane season starts June 1–and when that happens, the oil will be tossed far and wide. There will be no containment–just a compounded disaster.

The lies that have been told to America by BP, Transocean and our own government about what happened April 20 and what has happened since are so egregious, it’s breath-taking.

So where is the investigative arm of the meida in this disaster?
Their job is to bring us the story with immediacy and to investigate when and where it’s needed. No TV news outlet has done the job with the Gulf spill that it did with the mining disaster.

And if you think it only impacts those living in the Gulf, think again. When the seafood sources dry up, the entire national economy suffers. And that is only one small part of the story. If I can see it so clearly, Iwonder why the news anchors being paid millions can’t and why the President, who ran on his environmental credentials hasn’t been able to do more than just wag his finger sternly.

Today BP tries yet another attempt at capping the spill. We can all only pray that it works. But even if it does, the damage done thus far is simply beyond description. And one has to wonder at an Administration and a Congress so deaf to the concerns of those of us who love and value the Gulf.—VAB